New NREL modelling of 61 scenarios of US power sector thru 2050 is out. Under a current policies mid case, solar and wind look set to dominate with nuclear and gas still very much in the mix and storage ramping significantly #energysky (1/n)
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Sorry if this is a stupid question but I'm not finding a clear answer in the report:
Should we understand this "mid case" scenario to be a best guess at what will actually happen, or merely a product of wishful thinking, or something else?
The evolution of generation by technology across all scenarios shows the inevitable rise of renewables which dominate growth. Gas largely decreases or flatlines, gas ccs increases. Storage also set to grow to support renewable integration. New technologies also will have a role but coal is toast..
System costs around the $6-7k billion mark. What I find super interesting is that the zero emissions 2035 system is only 13.5% more expensive than the baseline case. System decarbonisation is cheap, and this is without counting the enormous societal benefits. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy25ost...
California has reduced the amount of electricity they get from burning methane by almost 40% over the last three years of adding batteries so I'm curious why it doesn't decrease very much in the NREL modeling.
Fair point I was also curious about this. Perhaps a combination of factors such as load growth and other parts of the us not decarbonising as aggressively as CA.
Different starting points in the different grids could account for it too I suspect. Bottom line is that everyone needs to push their local communities to decarbonize as fast they can get them to so we can "beat" their predictions.
The link in your post didn't work for me btw. does it work for you?
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Should we understand this "mid case" scenario to be a best guess at what will actually happen, or merely a product of wishful thinking, or something else?
The link in your post didn't work for me btw. does it work for you?